Woman on the Edge of Time

She nodded, disentangling herself from Luciente to clutch her hands together before her breasts. She felt pride and shame wash through her. Mala, the woman who acted. To thrust herself forward into the world. Luciente was speaking, but under the rush of her blood, the words mumbled like stones in the bed of a river. Slowly people drifted from the meetinghouse and began taking shovels, brooms from sheds along the square and the paths. The shovels clanged against the stone, the wood scraped. The night began to fill with laughter and the sounds of shoveling. The children stopped their fight and began to clear the snow. In red pants and a dark blue parka, Dawn was wielding a broom, coming along behind Otter, whose broad single braid bounced rhythmically on her back. Bee was clearing snow from the path toward the fooder, as Hawk came running and sliding to work beside him. Her breath came out in white plumes as she talked and talked full speed to him.

She could hear Luciente speaking but she could no longer distinguish the words in the roar of her blood. Only dimly she could hear the scrape of metal on stone. Lips moved as if people were singing. Dawn looked over her padded shoulder at them. Dawn smiled and waved and began to sweep very hard with the broom, showing off, casting up a fine white dust. Flakes rested lightly on her black dome of hair, the hood of the parka cast back. One flake sat for a moment on the end of her delicate, sensuously curved nose, snow on her beautiful Mayan nose where Connie imagined that she pressed a quick kiss.

She lay flat on her bed, out of breath as if she had been dropped from a height.

“What is it?” Tina sat up, awake. “You okay?”

“Yes …”

“You cried out. What happened–you have a bad dream?”

“A good one. Tina, I dreamed of my daughter, safe, happy, in another place.” She could still see Angelina’s face ruddy with playing, her small arms fat in the parka feverishly wielding the broom, while the snowflake melted on her nose. “If only they had left me something!” she whispered. Still trembling, she thought, If only they had left me Martin, or Claud, or Angelina, if they had even left me Dolly and Nita, I would have minded my own business. I’d have bowed my head and kept down. I was not born and raised to fight battles, but to be modest and gentle and still. Only one person to love. Just one little corner of loving of my own. For that love I’d have borne it all and I’d never have fought back. I would have obeyed. I would have agreed that I’m sick, that I’m sick to be poor and sick to be sick and sick to be hungry and sick to be lonely and sick to be robbed and used. But you were so greedy, so cruel! One of them, just one, you could have left me! But I have nothing. Why shouldn’t I strike back?

Yet her hands shook with fear. She lay cold and trembling, all the night.

“This operation is designed to help you,” Dr. Morgan said. “To enable us to return you to society. You’ll be able to hold a job.”

“I feel a lot better. Why do I need this operation now? I went home to my brother’s Thanksgiving. I worked real hard there. I’ve been good and cooperative on the ward.”

“You’ve been better before, Connie,” Acker said. Today Miss Moynihan was not sitting at his side but across the room next to her boss, Dr. Morgan. She and Acker did not catch each other’s gaze. Her gray eyes were bloodshot and underscored by dark tissue. She had been crying; she had not been sleeping. Patty passed her a note and she shook her head bitterly, drawing herself tighter. Acker seemed more nervous than usual. He had a dark area on his left cheek, like a bruise. Who had hit him? Miss Moynihan or one of her brothers? “We know that you can’t help what you do. It’s as though you experienced a shorting out of circuits that causes you to move into an episode of uncontrollable rage.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong in months. I’m much better. Why do I need this operation right now, when I’m doing fine?”

“You’ve had periods of calm before,” Dr. Redding pointed out. His fingers were propped together like steeples over his empty cup. “Long periods. But they always end the same way. Don’t they, Connie?”

“It isn’t the same. Really, please, it isn’t! Look, I did something I’m ashamed for, my daughter. But I’ve paid for that again and again! Forever. How can I be uncontrollable? You been controlling me.”

“You don’t want to hurt someone close to you again, do you, Connie? You have a recurrent disease, like someone who has a recurrent malaria,” Acker said, looking pleased with himself. He glanced at Dr. Redding for approval, but Redding was talking in Dr. Argent’s ear. Both of diem had been turning over the pages of a proposal of some sort, and Argent was going down the budget line by line, making little notes to the side.

“But maybe the other thing worked. Maybe I don’t need an operation!”

“We have a permission from the brother, don’t we?” Redding asked Patty.

She made a little sitting curtsy toward a file on the table. “Yes, Doctor.”